Friday’s Religion and Cult News Roundup

Eliezer Berland, a rabbi born in pre-State Israel fighting extradition from Holland over alleged sex crimes told Dutch daily de Volkskrant that he is a Holocaust survivor.

However, various official biographies of Berland contain no reference to the Holocaust.
Berland, 77, fled Israel two years ago after several women and one minor complained he sexually assaulted them. He has been expelled from Morocco and Zimbabwe, and he has also stayed in the United States and Zwitserland. Berland, whom the Dutch media have dubbed ‘the sex rabbi,’ fled several other countries, including South Africa where authorities tried twice to arrest him.

He was arrested in Amsterdam last September during a layover at Schiphol airport on his way from South Africa to the Ukraine.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency says, “The Dutch justice ministry supported Berland’s extradition, rejecting arguments by Berland’s lawyer, who says Berland is innocent, too ill to stand trial and that Israel lacks jurisdiction. A court in Schiphol is scheduled to rule on his case next month.”

Taking a break?

Broadcasting under the name ‘YHWH,’ Elliott stated that he preached “Old Testament doctrine without any of the erroneous, destructive and confusing traditions of men.”

Referring to himself as a “spiritual Jew,” in one broadcast available on YouTube he explained, “My goal is to magnify and amplify the divine name of YHWH, creator of heaven and earth.”

Elliott says that he had been a Christian for 40 years before YHWH ‘revealed the truth’ to him. He notes that he can document that “tens of millions of Christians have been fooled by the dark side into believing in the so-called god Jesus.”

Often these groups, which promote Scientology’s philosphy and are said to recruit new customers, are not upfront about their association with the Scientology business.

This includes the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a ironically-named hate group that fights against alleged abuses in psychiatry and psychology; Applied Scholastics, which promotes the use of ‘study techniques’ created by Scientology cult founder L. Ron Hubbard; and Narconon, http://www.apologeticsindex.org/2758-narconon, which uses Scientology’s quackery in its attempts to treat substance abusers.

The Scientology-linked antidrug program visited classrooms freely for years until 2005, when medical experts and the state Department of Education determined it was promoting bogus science. The alarm went up a decade ago after The Chronicle revealed that Narconon’s antidrug messages to students were based not on medical evidence, according to the experts, but on the practices of Scientology.– Source: Narconon: Misleading antidrug program back in public schools, San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2014

Founded in 1979, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is a global network of people concerned about psychological manipulation and abuse in cultic or high-demand groups, alternative movements, and other environments. ICSA is tax-exempt, supports civil liberties, and is not affiliated with any religious or commercial organizations.

It is a study on the popularization of yoga. Jain says the book’s key messages is “that yoga has been perpetually context-sensitive, so there is no “legitimate,” “authentic,” “orthodox,” or “original” tradition, only contextualized ideas and practices organized around the term yoga. In other words, the innovations unique to pop culture yoga do not de-authenticate them simply because they represent products of consumer culture.”

Asked what she views as some of the biggest misconceptions about yoga, Jain says Selling Yoga “illuminates a number of growing movements that oppose popularized yoga and even sometimes court fear of it.” As a example she refers to the views of ‘some Christians,” which she refers to as the “Christian yogaphobic position.”

Another misconception, according to Jain, is “that yoga is definitively Hindu. This idea is based on revisionist histories that essentialize yoga’s identity, ignoring its historical and lived heterogeneity.”

Meant to appeal to a wide audience Selling Yoga is written in an accessible style.